


Cause For Alarm

by OffYourBird



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Light-Hearted, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:14:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OffYourBird/pseuds/OffYourBird
Summary: Spike’s chip doesn’t react quite the way it did in canon. In fact, toward Buffy, it doesn’t react at all.





	Cause For Alarm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my two year anniversary at Elysian Fields. With many thanks to yellowb for beta’ing. She knows just how to help my brain when it’s feeling clumsy.
> 
> Set starting in Something Blue.

Finding Spike after his little hostage breakout from Giles’s place was alarmingly easy. Two seconds flat and there was Spike standing dramatically in the middle of the campus quad. Even more alarming was the vampire’s subsequent emotional breakdown—it was probably never a sign of mental stability when someone started ravaging the lawn with their bare hands.

“Open up! I'm gonna kill you!”

“Spike, there's nothing there.”

He ignored her. “Let me in!” he demanded instead, still throwing clumps of sod. Then he slumped, his voice falling to desperate and agonized. “Fix me.”

Buffy was pretty sure that, whoever the commandos were, they wouldn’t exactly fix him if they took him back in. More like he’d become another kind of science experiment or, most probably, a big pile of dust.

The unexpected alarm  _that_  thought produced stilled her immediate desire to wrench Spike away from the grass with a very unsympathetic amount of Slayer strength. Instead, she just sighed and lifted her eyes to the sky. “Seriously, if you don’t shut it, I’m going to gag you.  _There’s_   _nothing there_.”

He crumpled in on himself entirely at that, his head bowing toward the ground as he knelt, more broken than she’d ever imagined Spike could be. Her alarm scale blared a bright, flashing red, on major overload. Stupid vampire.

Thankfully, her threat seemed to work. Spike pulled himself to his feet with a dejected sigh. “Yeah, whatever, Slayer. Back to the brig, is it?”

Of course, when they got back to Giles’s house and were about half an inch from killing each other, Buffy realized how deeply and completely in love with Spike she was. And nothing was alarming at all. Everything was so, so right. Even when she wanted to whack him over the head with a pile of Giles’s books for his snide comments about the reception table settings.

It was all okay. She was getting  _married_.

And then she wasn’t. The mid-kiss loss of a happy future and the man who loved her nearly swamped her. Only, her body hadn’t apparently gotten the memo; she was still straddling Spike on the crypt floor. She reared back and, for a split second, saw the same devastated look in Spike’s eyes. The loss was swamping him too. So, they did the only thing there was to do—played up the disgust by about ten notches, wiped their lips and glared and muttered insults, and scrambled away to a safe physical distance. As if any distance was now safe enough.

It wasn’t until Willow started rambling her apologies on the way back to Giles’s place that Buffy realized something which broke the alarm scale entirely off its base.

Spike had hurt her… and  _he_  hadn’t hurt.

Sure, it had been in a playful, ‘look at my fiancé pushing boundaries’ kind of way. But he’d still hurt her. Pinched her painfully on the butt as she wiggled on his lap. She’d squealed indignantly, of course, lost in love—god, she’d been  _so_  in love—and swatted at his head with a scandalized laugh. “Spike, cut it out!”

He’d just grinned and gone back to kissing her, both of them ignoring Giles’s exaggerated complaints. Neither of them had considered the implications at the time. But all they had now was consideration.

Granted, they knew very little about what the commandos had done to Spike but, so far, he’d gotten a headache several times in her vicinity doing something vampy and aggressive. But not directly  _at_  her.

Her steps faltered. She glanced almost unwillingly toward Spike, only to find him already watching her out of the corner of his eye, his expression so confused and wary that she knew he had figured out the exact same thing she had. He held her gaze for a single heartbeat before dramatically stumbling and falling against Anya. They yelped in pain at the same time. Spike muttered an apology, then immediately swerved away from the group—deeper into the cemetery. Buffy gave the others a rushed excuse and followed the retreating shape of his duster. It flared behind him, snapping with his brisk pace. He didn’t turn around. She held back as he approached some kind of nasty gray demon.

“Oi, good lookin’! Over here! Wanna dance?”

The demon apparently did want to dance. It roared and rushed, and Spike—his face scrunched up as he prepared for pain—punched it right in its throat. His arm fell back without a single visible twinge. He paused for only a moment, then leapt fully into the fight with a jubilant roar.

Buffy’s feet were glued to the ground when Spike finally crushed the demon’s chest in. They both watched it waver and fall, a jellied lump. Spike kicked it once with his boot.

“Well, then,” he said to the corpse. He whirled back to her with dark, gleeful fire in his eyes. “Shall we get to it?”

Buffy looked at him blankly. Her mind whirled with inappropriate ideas for context—stuck on the entirely-not-happening wedding and wedding night. “… It?”

Spike threw a sharp, exasperated jab into the air. “ _It_ , Slayer. You know, fight to the death, Slayer to vampire, tale as old as sodding time?”

“Oh.” She stared down at the dead demon. Whatever the commandos had done to Spike apparently only applied to normal people. And witches and ex-demons, based on Spike’s experiences with Willow and Anya. But not actual demons. And not the Slayer. Not Buffy.  _I’m not normal enough?_  Her stomach roiled. “No.” She turned and walked away, numbness filling every limb.

Spike’s voice sounded behind her, equal parts irritated and desperate; “No? Why the bloody hell is it  _no_?”

Buffy clenched her fists so hard the nails bit into her skin as she swung around to meet Spike’s expectant gaze. “If it’s only me and demons you can hurt, then there’s really no problem.” Steel edged into her tone. “I can take you. It’s the rest of the world I’m worried about.”

She turned and started walking again, Spike’s disappointed, “Oh, c’mon, Slayer!” echoing behind her.

“Night, Spike.”

 

***

 

Spike followed her around on patrol like a manic puppy after that—“out on account of good behavior,” or so he said. He never attacked her like she was always half-ready for him to do; but then, Spike was impulsive, not stupid, and he’d had time to think things through. If they fought, then that was the end. He’d be dead or, in the  _very_  unlikely case that he came out on top, he’d be left in a world he couldn’t survive in super well without the allies currently keeping him safe. Especially since said previous allies would be after his blood.

So, it seemed he’d decided annoying Buffy to death was the better alternative. And no matter how often she sniped at him or altered her nightly patrol path, he continued to dog her, taking a portion of the kills that were completely and totally  _hers_.

Complaining to Giles on the subject didn’t get her anywhere, either. Particularly since her Watcher didn't know about Spike’s little performance problem not being such a problem around her. He’d have a crossbolt through Spike’s chest in a second, and she wasn't quite ready to deliver that death sentence to the bleached menace. Yet.

“With Spike only able to harm demons,” her Watcher said patiently, “he’s hardly a liability. And it is greatly apparent that he’s willing to harm his own kind to sate his bloodlust. Look at it this way: you now have very capable assistance accomplishing your duty. If you can survive the irony of the circumstance.” He cleaned his glasses with a musing, “Who’d have imagined the Slayer of Slayers actually assisting the Slayer?”

“You just want him out of your apartment,” Buffy accused.

Giles didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. “Mm, yes, that is a very fortunate side effect, isn’t it?”

Buffy glared at him before storming out, Spike inevitably at her heels. At the first cemetery, after the vampire took out two of  _her_  fledges, she’d finally had enough.

She whirled on him, stake extended. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

Spike just bounced back on his heels with a devilish grin as he casually wiped vamp dust from his sleeve. “Or what, Slayer? Gonna give me a good poke with that little bit of wood?” His grin widened. “Maybe that’s the problem, eh? You’ve been taking it when you should’ve been on the giving end. But I’m not breakable like your boy.” His eyes glittered. “So give it to me good, Buffy.”

Mortified anger made her entire body flame. “How about I give you a twisted face to go with your twisted brain,” she gritted out between clenched teeth, then punched him in the nose as hard she could. Bone gave way with a satisfying crunch against her knuckles.

“Bitch!”

A fist flung toward her eye in return, knocking her back on her ass. When her vision cleared, she looked up to see Spike glowering down at her, holding his bleeding nose with a hand.

“That’s it!” he snarled. “I’m putting you in the ground.”

Buffy flipped to her feet with a deathglare, stake tight in her fist. “You don’t have the stones,  _Spikey_.”

The taunt reversed from their pre-engagement arguing had just the effect she hoped for: Spike’s eyes flashed amber, his reply leaving him in an incoherent growl.

They met in a tangle of angry punches and kicks.

It was somewhere after the fourth ‘I could have killed you right then’ move between the two of them that Buffy admitted why she wasn’t following through. She was having fun. Oh god, she’d forgotten just how fun fighting Spike was. He was so fast—faster than her—and she was constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed by his lightning quick moves. But then, he wasn’t quite as strong as she was, and she knew every one of her hits jarred him to the bone.

It should have been alarming to realize they were probably both just going to die of exhaustion because neither of them wanted the fight to end. But then they rolled and somehow ended up in the exact same position they’d been in when the spell-that-wouldn’t-be-spoken-of ended, Buffy straddled atop Spike’s hips as he stared up at her from the ground, his eyes wide and searching. Memories welled unbearably and Buffy threw herself off him, landing hard on the ground a foot away.

After a tense moment of silence, Spike started rummaging around in his duster pocket, eventually pulling out his lighter and a battered box of cigarettes. He lit a cigarette and snapped the zippo shut. Smoke fluttered out into the dark sky. “Hell of a workout,” he said at last.

Buffy didn’t quite trust her voice, but she managed a quiet, “Yeah.”

He shifted on his elbows, turning his head to meet her gaze. His blue eyes were alarmingly bright. “Wanna do it again sometime?”

The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Okay.”

 

***

 

She considered telling Giles a million different times about being exempt from Spike's shock collar, if for no other reason than to maybe figure out  _why_. But she could never make herself start the conversation. As wiggins-y as it was, she liked having this secret with Spike. She liked the knock-down-drag-out fights that now completed most of her evening patrols. She liked the way her body felt after being stretched to its limits. She even liked the way Spike walked her back to her dorm without a word when they were done.

About two weeks after they’d started their new routine, when they’d gotten done beating each other up and sat propped against gravestones in an easy, satisfied lassitude, Buffy finally let the worry gnawing at her escape into words. “What am I?”

Spike quirked a brow. “Feeling philosophical tonight, Slayer?”

Buffy shrugged, her knees drawn up to her chest. “You can hurt me. You can’t hurt other people.”

Spike snorted. “Well, you’re not like other people, are you? Doesn’t seem the little science experiment in my head cares much about magic, but it seems to care a bloody lot about strength. And hate to tell you, luv, but you’ll never pass as a regular co-ed when you can bench press a car.”

Buffy pushed her chin farther against her knees. “Not all demons are strong.”

“Oh, I see. Afraid you’re a demon, then?” He shrugged, staring off into the night. “There’re worse things.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Spike turned back to her with a faint, amused smile. “Slayer, your kind was made to take down demons. Chances are more than fair that your precious Slayer power comes from demons or something of the like. But that doesn’t make  _you_  a demon.”

Buffy’s heart clenched in her chest as she forced herself to hold his surprisingly soft gaze. “So what am I then?”

A flicker of something crossed his face and was gone. “You’re…” His mouth parted, as if unwilling words were trying to work past his lips. Finally, he closed his eyes with a wince, as if the whatever-it-was in his head had gone off. “Bloody hell, Buffy, you’re brilliant.” His eyes snapped open, boring into her. “That’s what you are, alright? Brilliant and beautiful and you drive me out of my bleeding mind.”

_Oh._

Alarm bells should’ve probably started ringing. But they didn’t. Or, if they did, Buffy was too busy clambering onto Spike’s lap and pressing her mouth against his to care.

Kissing Spike now wasn’t anything like it had been under the spell, when they’d been easy and assured lovers. No, this was violently needy—weeks of pent-up memories and leftover desire churning in their brains and hearts and skin. It was brutal and greedy and so earth-shatteringly good that Buffy couldn’t bring herself to mind the taste of smoke and sweat and blood that coated Spike’s lips and tongue. She drank them in instead.

Spike’s hands ended up tangled in her hair, his jean-clad erection pressing between her thighs. She rocked against him as she devoured his mouth, shocks of pleasure sparking in her lower belly. He growled against her lips—a hungry, encouraging sound—and one hand slipped down to her hip, pressing her further down on him.

“Take it,” he demanded between kisses, his lips tracing across her jaw and nipping at her ear. “God, I want to feel you come on me, Buffy. Come on me.”

She whimpered, the sound turning to a gasp when he bit down on a tendon in her neck and held his mouth there, just shy of breaking the skin. It was the most alarmingly erotic thing to happen to her. Her clit throbbed as she teetered on the edge, unable to get the right pressure through all the layers of clothing.

“I need…” she whispered frantically, all the words lodged in her throat.

Spike rumbled against her throat. The hand on her hip disappeared, trekking across her jeans to unbutton them. The zipper slid down and cool fingers traced circles against her damp panties. She came with a keening, helpless cry.

Her head fell to Spike’s shoulder as pleasure shuddered through her. His arms snaked around her, massaging her muscles battered from their fight. They sat still and quiet, only their combined breathing disturbing the dark of the cemetery.

The breathless “thank you” that came a few moments later, pressed into her hair, was so unexpected that Buffy almost thought she hallucinated it. But Spike’s follow-up kiss against her temple grounded it alarmingly in the possibility of reality.

She raised her head, bewildered. “Why... I mean, it was me that…”

“Been wanting you to do that since the spell, that’s why.” Spike’s mouth curved into a crooked line. “And longer.”

Buffy regarded him with wide eyes. “Longer?”

His eyes darted away from her, jaw clenching. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was embarrassed.

She wavered for a moment when he continued to not answer, then finally settled on a halting, “What else have you wanted to do since the spell… or longer?”

Blue eyes zeroed back on her, mirroring her own previous astonishment. Then they narrowed to predatory slits. “Under that bloody magic,” Spike growled as he flipped them over, Buffy’s back hitting the hard ground without reservation or apology, “I wanted to make you my bride.” A deft hand tugged her unzipped pants harshly down her legs as she kicked off her boots. “Wanted to fuck you day and night and call you trite rubbish the whole time.” Her underwear came off with a snap—she shoved his duster off his shoulders in retaliation. “Wanted to whisper nauseatingly sweet, dirty nothings against your skin.” Buffy whimpered and clawed at his belt buckle as his body shadowed her from above, his expression grave and his voice mocking. “Wanted to call you my beloved, my sweetest darling, my goldilocks, my bitch of a queen.”

Buffy paused in unzipping his jeans and looked up with a glare. “Your  _what_?”

A ghost of a smile found Spike’s lips as he gestured toward himself. “I was whammied by a betrothal spell, Slayer, not concussed. You’re a prissy, stuck-up bitch most of the time.”

Buffy’s mouth fell open in angry shock. “I am not!”

“No?” Spike bent down so his face was inches from hers, his hands splayed on either side of her head as he held his weight off of her. There was a devilish smirk on his lips. “Then prove it.”

Oh, she’d prove it all right—she’d prove that stupid smirk right off his infuriating face.  _Wait_. Her mental rant jerked to a stop. “I don’t have to prove a damn thing to you.”

Spike’s smirk only widened. “Oh ho, the Slayer’s fangs have arrived at last.” He let some of his weight sink on her—his barely clad erection teased her hip. “That’s exactly right, luv. Not a damn thing.” His expression softened, twisting slightly. “Since that ruddy spell, I’ve wanted you to, though.” His voice fell to a lethal purr. “Wanted you to show me just how much that goody two shoes veneer holds back the beast in you.”

Buffy shoved at Spike’s chest and knocked him back—out of denial or confirmation, or some awful mix of the two. She followed the motion, straddling his hips and only belatedly realizing that the motion had caused his unzipped jeans to slip a few inches down. His cock sprung free, pressing insistently against the swell of her ass.  _Of course_  Spike didn’t wear underwear.

Spike was all but laughing at her now, his blue eyes bright and flaring with anticipation. “Well, well, the big bad vampire’s at your mercy, pet.”

Buffy arched a brow. “You weren’t before?”

“Don’t recall my dangly bits being so intimately involved before.”

“Is that all it takes? Gee, if I’d known that two years ago, I could have dusted you in no time.” Then, before her sanity decided to return from its impromptu vacation, she angled his cock with a hand and sank down.

The complete and utter shock on Spike’s face was totally worth the insanity. The awe that chased it away as she began to move on top of him made Loonyville even seem like an attractive destination.

“I’d have been dust,” Spike agreed hoarsely as his hands shifted to her hips, helping her smooth out her inexperienced pace, “in seconds.”

Buffy knew better than to mention that she now knew that to be unlikely; she’d have been far too distracted to remember any kind of phallic object that wasn’t the one currently impaling her. Especially since Spike’s mouth had found her nipples through her shirt and was currently nipping them in a way that made embarrassing, high-pitched mewls escape from her throat.

She twisted her hips in retaliation, and Spike’s mouth released her with an admiring groan. “Christ, Buffy, you  _are_  an animal.”

“No,” she managed clearly, her voice hitching only at the end as Spike’s thumb found her clit, “I’m the Vampire Slayer.”

The admiration in Spike’s voice swelled. “That you are.” His thumb worked faster against her, pleasure splintering through her lower belly. “Come for me again.”

“I’ll come when I feel like it,” she retorted sharply, earning herself an actual, real smile from Spike that was somehow a more vulnerable gesture than their current physical connection.

His head cocked in mirthful consideration as he thrust up against her, nearly sending her off the edge. “Do you feel like it yet, Slayer?”

She held on through sheer force of will as she rode him, biting down on a whimper. “Not yet,” she managed.

At least Spike wasn’t looking so in-control, either—his chest was heaving with unneeded breath as he watched her bounce up and down. “Stubborn bint.”

“Annoying jerk,” she gasped, her hands clawing at his t-shirt as her orgasm burst through her falling defenses. Consuming, ticklish heat pulsed through her all the way to the edges of her fingertips as she spasmed on him with a panting cry.

Spike cursed beneath her, his pace turning jerky and wild. “Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_!” His hands tightened against her hips almost painfully as he followed her off the edge.

Buffy’s sanity slowly returned as she lay limply atop Spike’s chest, and she waited for the alarm bells. When none seemed forthcoming, she warily lifted her head. “Are you going to say something awful now?”

Spike's eyes narrowed. “Wasn’t much planning on it, but I can make an exception. Why, you looking for an excuse to run off with your virtue fluttering?”

“I… I don’t know.” Adding Spike to her growing list of failed lovers would be easy—and without a doubt the smartest thing to do. Except that, no matter how wrong the groiny-ness was, it hadn’t felt like it. Didn’t feel like it now, either, as Spike stroked her hair, his touch gentle and his expression bordering on belligerent.

“Look, Slayer, it was just a different kind of workout, alright? It wasn’t… whatever you’re afraid it was.”

She latched onto the excuse with desperate firmness. “Right. Just another kind of workout. Slayer versus vampire stuff… Business as usual.”

The tension in Spike’s expression eased. “Yeah. Business as usual. Exactly.” An awkward silence fell, and he cleared his throat. “Suppose we should get you back to your university digs.”

Right. Because that was business as usual. Buffy nodded and lifted herself gingerly off Spike’s body, retrieving her pants and the remains of her underwear while Spike pulled his jeans back up.

They walked the entire way back to her dorm without another word, though Spike’s hand hesitantly found hers halfway there. But that was okay—basically just good sportsmanship after a hard game. A very, very hard game.

By unspoken agreement, their routine continued. Except for when speaking was literally not an option and she had to go all Princess Slayer on a bunch of fairytale heart thieves. And the night was only made worse when she found out her psych class T.A. and had-one-picnic-y-date-with guy was one of the commandos they’d been searching for. Heck, that wasn’t just an alarms blaring kind of situation—more like a frozen TV screen with an Acme character holding up a giant sign that read  _Disastrous idea this way. And probably a giant piano falling from the sky_. At least it made her feel less bad for forgetting to tell Riley that her day-long engagement had been a sham. She decided to continue not enlightening him.

Instead, she took out her frustration on her ex-fiancé afterward. And if the stress relief happened to look more like a porno-in-progress than sparring, well… that was pretty much the fault of the viewer for misinterpreting things.


End file.
